president
Personal Information
Born Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor, January 28, 1948, in Arthington, Liberia; son of Nelson (a teacher, sharecropper, and lawyer), and Zoe Taylor; married, wife's name, Tupee; seven children.
Education: Attended Chamberlayne Junior College; Bentley College, B.A., 1977.
Politics: National Patriotic Front (NPFL) of Liberia.
Religion: Baptist.
Career
Worked as a security guard, mechanic, and truck driver in Boston, MA, 1970s; General Services Agency (Liberian interior government ministry), director, 1980-83; served as deputy minister of commerce and industry, 1983; leader of the National Patriotic Front (NPFL) of Liberia, late 1980s; elected president of Liberia, July, 1997.
Life's Work
In July of 1997, the people of Liberia overwhelmingly elected Charles Taylor to serve as president of their war-torn country. The former guerrilla leader gained support from over 75 percent of voters in an election that international observers described as fair. Taylor is often regarded by the international community as one of the instigators of a bloody civil war that lasted seven years, claimed 200,000 lives, created one million refugees, and shattered a once-prosperous nation. However, Taylor appeared to enjoy widespread popular support and has a long history of political activism.
Charles Taylor was born in 1948 in Arthington, near Liberia's capital of Monrovia. For decades Liberia, considered West Africa's first independent republic, enjoyed a reputation as a stable country with a robust economy. It also seemed to be free of the ethnic rivalries and colonial tensions that marked the political landscape elsewhere in Africa. Ninety-five percent of the population belonged to one of several ethnic groups, while the other five percent, known as Americo-Liberians, dominated the country's politics and economy. The Americo-Liberians were descendants of Liberia's original nineteenth-century settlers, who founded the country as a homeland for freed American slaves. Eventually, the majority of Liberians began to resent the Americo- Liberians for their discriminatory attitudes and refusal to share power. It was this resentment that sowed the seeds of Liberia's civil war and paved the way for Taylor's emergence to power.
Taylor was only half Americo-Liberian; his mother was from the Gola tribe. He was one of several children in the family, and his father was alternately a teacher, sharecropper, lawyer, and local judge. He was raised in Clay-Ashland, outside Monrovia, and as a teen was expelled from private preparatory school. Taylor had long been captivated by the history of New England because many freed slaves had left on ships from New Bedford, Massachusetts to colonize Liberia. He received a student visa to study in the United States and arrived in the Boston area in 1972. Taylor enrolled at Chamberlayne Junior College and worked as a security guard, truck driver, and mechanic to support himself. He later transferred to Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts and graduated with a degree in economics in 1977.
During his years in the United States, Taylor became active in the Union of Liberian Associations and eventually rose to the post of national chairperson. When Liberian President William Tolbert visited the United States in 1979, Taylor led a noisy demonstration outside the Liberian mission in New York City to protest Tolbert's policies. Tolbert invited Taylor into the mission for a debate. The articulate Taylor easily won the debate and announced that he was taking over the mission. He was arrested and spent a few days in jail, but Tolbert refused to press charges. Instead, the president invited Taylor and four other Union activists to return to Liberia in the spring of 1980. Tolbert provided them with spending money and a car and hoped to win their support.
In April of 1980, shortly after Taylor's arrival, Tolbert was murdered during a military coup led by army sergeant Samuel K. Doe. Doe declared himself president, becoming the first indigenous Liberian to lead the country. In the weeks following the coup, there was a great deal of bloodshed as many Liberians attempted to settle scores with the Americo-Liberians. Doe quickly suspended the constitution and declared martial law. Many Americo-Liberians, fearing for their lives, fled the country.
Taylor, with his articulateness and political experience, soon became a key player in Doe's government. Due to his background in economics, he was chosen to head the General Services Agency, the purchasing agency of the Liberian government. Taylor controlled disbursements to other parts of government and, in 1983, he was accused of approving transfers of funds from the Ministry of Finance to a New Jersey company called International Earthmoving Equipment. The company, which never sent any equipment to Liberia, had a zero balance in its U.S. bank account before this transfer, and investigators eventually traced further transfers out of this account into Taylor's own Citibank account. Taylor was removed from his post in May of 1983 and he fled to the United States in October.
The Liberian government accused Taylor of embezzlement and a warrant was issued for Taylor's arrest and extradition. In May of 1984, he was arrested by U.S. federal agents in Massachusetts and spent sixteen months in the Plymouth House of Corrections. In September of 1985, Taylor and four other inmates escaped from the jail. Although the three other inmates were recaptured, Taylor remained at large. "For years the law enforcement community has been awash with rumors that someone, perhaps in the U.S. intelligence services, might have winked at Taylor's escape and even helped his career as a rebel," reported David L. Marcus of the Boston Globe in 1997. However, Marcus noted, there was no concrete evidence to support such claims.
Following his escape, Taylor simply vanished. It was suspected that he made his way to Libya and was sheltered there by Muammar Qaddafi, one the most bitter enemies of the United States. On Christmas Eve of 1989, Taylor resurfaced as the leader of an invasion force of mercenaries and Liberian refugees who crossed into Liberia from the Sierra Leone border. His National Patriotic Front (NPFL), estimated at only 150 to 500 men, declared war on Doe's regime, and easily won victories in Liberia's rural countryside. The NPFL set up headquarters in Gbarnga, and enjoyed the support of a large number of Liberians dissatisfied with Doe's regime. At first the U.S. State Department also lent tacit support to Taylor, finding the American-educated activist preferable to Doe.
By July of 1990, Taylor's NPFL forces had entered Monrovia. However, a faction within the NPFL led by Prince Johnson broke with Taylor and captured significant sections of city for themselves. A peacekeeping force comprised of troops from other West African nations had also arrived, but they were soon drawn into the fighting. The battle for Monrovia continued and many Liberians were killed, including Taylor's own father. In September of 1990, both factions of the NPFL declared victory over Doe's forces. Doe was captured while trying to flee Monrovia and was executed.
For the next few years, Liberia's civil war continued between the Taylor and Johnson factions of the NPFL. Taylor still controlled most of Liberia's rural areas from his Gbarnga headquarters. Both sides were accused of committing atrocities and recruiting children for their militias. In 1992, Taylor's NPFL forces were blamed for the vicious murder of five American nuns at a rural mission.
In 1993, a cease-fire was declared and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter agreed to broker peace talks in Nigeria designed to end the Liberian civil war. In August of 1995, Taylor and the NPFL forces under his command made a triumphant return to Monrovia, where thousands greeted him in the streets. A six-member ruling council was set up to help restore democracy to Liberia.
The other political factions within Liberia did not wield nearly as much influence as the NPFL. With a presidential election scheduled for the summer of 1997, Taylor benefitted greatly from owning the country's most powerful radio station, which he had captured during the early weeks of the civil war. Also, unlike his opponents, Taylor could afford to pay for an extensive billboard campaign that plastered his picture throughout Liberia. Since roughly 65 percent of Liberia's population is illiterate, all ballots have a photograph of each candidate. Therefore, Taylor's billboard campaign made his face much more recognizable to voters than those of other candidates.
Taylor won the presidential election with 75.3 percent of the vote in balloting monitored by international observers. In the first weeks of his administration, Taylor won praise from the international community by putting a policy of national reconciliation in place, and handing key positions in the administration to non-NPFL leaders. As for the abuses of the civil war, Taylor told New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson, "I have already apologized to the Liberian people. I have asked for their forgiveness, and I have also forgiven them.... Wars are terrible wherever they are, and things happen you cannot account for."
Liberia faced many severe problems despite the return of peace, including a shattered economy, massive foreign debt, and roads, buildings, and bridges destroyed by years of fighting. Taylor has also been accused of plundering Liberia's rich natural resources. The New Yorker's Anderson reported that Liberia's forests are being felled at an incredibly alarming rate, possibly through the use of forced labor. Taylor's administration also faces a serious political threat from the huge number of disabled veterans of the civil war, many of whom are unable to find work or receive medical and rehabilitative care. Many of these veterans are among Taylor's sharpest critics.
In February of 1998, Taylor visited the United States and spoke at a church with the Reverend Jesse Jackson. He is the father of several children, and lives in the heavily-fortified presidential compound outside Monrovia. He enjoys playing basketball and tennis to keep fit.
Further Reading
- Boston Globe, September 24, 1985, p. 28; July 31, 1990, p. 1; May 26, 1997, p. 1; May 27, 1997, p. 12; August 14, 1997, p. A1.
- Insight on the News, August 25, 1997, p. 21.
- Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1990, p. A6.
- New Yorker, July 27, 1998, pp. 34-43.
- Washington Post, August 10, 1997, p. C4.
— Carol Brennan
